A few weeks ago, I took a day trip to Berlin for some avant-garde currywurst and a short walk along the Spree river. Imagine my undercaffeinated surprise, then, when an airport bus dropped me off in the middle of Budapest airport’s tarmac in front of a plane from a ’60s theme movie—and instead of presenting me with a photo opportunity, I was ushered inside to face its Lilliputian cabin.

It turned out that the Hungarian flag carrier Malév had recently celebrated its 65th birthday by painting one of their Bombardier Dash 8 turboprops with the livery they’d used from 1960 to 1974 on their Ilyushin Il–18’s.

Accidentally, I was dressed to match the plane in a very white shirt with an aqua blue bow tie, and as the heavily vibrating Bombardier banked above Budapest on its way to Berlin, all that was missing was a pack of unfiltered cigarettes to smoke on board. What I got instead was a stale croissant and a cup of modern airplane coffee.